Periodic Prompts: Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?

Books. Yeah I know, heresey, but the simple fact is that I got an iPad and haven’t looked back. Now, don’t get me wrong a beautiful hardcover edition is impossible to beat, but I have shelf after shelf of paperbacks that vary somewhere between trash and reference editions, and for the latter, a searchable digital version is better in any case, and as for the former, well, I like the books I like and I make no apologies, but they don’t half take up space. (As anyone who has ever seen my living space can attest, the last decade or so has basically been a race for my space to stay fractionally ahead of my book habit.)

So I have a new rule – I will only buy paper books if they are beautiful objects in and of themselves, or if I absolutely cannot get a digital edition, and absolutely have to have the book, and even then, I’llbe grumbling about it . So I haven’t altogether stopped buying books as yet, but I’m getting there. Give it another two or three years, and with any luck, I’ll be buying paper editions as often as I buy CDs at the rate of one or two a year.

I’ve also done fairly well at acquiring ebook editions of a lot of print books I own. Not, er, strictly legit, I know, but in my defence they all books where I have at one time or another, owned the dead tree edition. In any event, the net result is that I’ve been able to declutter my life to the tune of some 200 books, and I plan to keep going.

I’m hoping to do the same for graphics novels, but imagine that’ll take a while longer.